Sly Cooper

(series)

Sly Cooper is a series of action-stealth platforming video games for the Sony PlayStation 2. The series has been developed by Sucker Punch Productions.

Setting

The world of Sly Cooper is an alternate version of the real world in the last decade of the 20th century, populated by anthropomorphic animals and with film noir and comic book motifs. The focus of the story is Sly Cooper, a young adult raccoon and the latest descendant in a line of master thieves who pass down their expert techniques from generation to generation. While the Cooper family has accumulated a massive amount of wealth through their thieving ways, Sly places greater value on his friendship with his partners, Bentley and Murray, and his flirting and teasing relationship with Inspector Carmelita.

Major Characters

The Sly Cooper gang: Murray (left), Sly, and Bentley, along with Sly's logo in the upper right

See also: List of Sly Cooper Characters

Sly Cooper: Sly Cooper is the lead character that the player controls most of the time. Sly is a young male adult raccoon that is part of a long line of master thieves. He witnessed the death of his parents when the Fiendish Five stole his family's "Thievius Raccoonus", a book filled with all the special moves that his family had accumulated over the centuries, and was forced into an orphanage, where he met Bentley and Murray, leading to their later escapades.

Bentley the Turtle: Bentley is the brains of Sly's gang. He is a turtle that is skilled with electronics, computers, and gadgets, and generally helps with reconnaissance and mission planning while Sly's out in the field.

Murray the Hippo: Murray is the muscle and Sly's wheelman, in charge of driving the Cooper Gang's van to various locations. A large pink hippo, he often ventures to the field to assist Sly and to act as a decoy if needed.

Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox: Inspector Fox, a member of Interpol, is Sly's nemesis. She is a vixen who has her mind set on capturing Sly, but also demonstrates some romantic feelings for him, which Sly often uses to escape capture at the last minute.

Common gameplay elements

A screenshot from Sly Cooper And The Thievius Raccoonus, showing Sly hiding from a guard. The blue lights to the left indicate Sly's thief senses, in this case, a wall that he can sidle against.

The games in the Sly Cooper series are played primarily as a third person platform game. The player controls Sly or one of his companions through several levels, relying primarily on stealth to avoid encounters and alarms while collecting treasures or other items. Sly is very agile, and is able to use many of the features of the architecture for stealth, indicated to the player by a blue glow, explained in-game as a visible manifestation of Sly's "thief senses;" for example, Sly can alight on the top of sharp points, sneak along a narrow ledge, or use his cane to swing from hooks. If necessary, Sly can use his cane to defeat foes at the risk of making noise that may attract other foes; he prefers to use sneak attacks when possible, due to his relative lack of durability compared to most opponents. Due to his heritage, Sly has a number of special moves that he learns through the games that can also increase his stealth or speed, or allow him to dispatch foes silently. There are also mini-games scattered throughout the gameplay.

Each game is broken into a series of heists, and to accomplish the heist, Sly and his gang must complete several sub-missions. In the first game, each sub-mission was located on a level accessible from the main heist level, while the second and third games used an nonlinear, open world approach to have various missions located around the same large level. There is typically a boss fight at the end of each heist as the conclusion to the mission.

Games

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

See also: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus was released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 platform. Sly must recover his family's "Thievius Raccoonus", a book listing all the special thieving skills his family has collected over several centuries, which was stolen by a rival gang, The Fiendish Five, led by Clockwerk the owl to be used for their own nefarious purposes. Meanwhile, Sly and his gang must keep ahead of Inspector Carmelita who promises to one day capture Sly and put him away for his crimes. The game introduces Sly, Bentley, Murray, and Carmelita.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves

See also: Sly 2: Band of Thieves

Sly 2: Band of Thieves was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 platform. In this game, a series of mechanical parts have been stolen by the Klaww Gang that could be used to revive the defeated Clockwerk. While Sly and his gang follow these leads, they are pursued by Carmelita and her partner, Constable Neyla, who are after both the Cooper Gang and the Klaww Gang.

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

See also: Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 platform. Sly has learned of the Cooper Vault, a gigantic store of the wealth his family's accumulated over the years, but must find a way to defeat Doctor M, who is also knows of the vault, and has taken over the island where it is located to try to break into it. Sly must regroup his old gang and recruit new members in order to succeed at reclaiming his family's history, all while still on the run from Carmelita.

Future titles

Sly Cooper 4 (working title) was announced on May 24, 2007 for a speculative 2008 release for the PlayStation 3^[1]. The game would have been premiered at E3 2007, and would feature connectivity with the Sly Cooper PSP game for the PlayStation Portable, which will be simultaneously released with the PlayStation 3 version. However, on June 5, 2007, IGN and other sources posted that there has yet to be any confirmation that work on these games exists, and thus this speculation may be incorrect.^[2]

Instead, it was announced at E3 2007 that Sucker Punch was working on a PlayStation 3 title called Infamous, a sandbox game based on a futuristic world with more photorealistic graphics. Brian Fleming of Sucker Punch Productions stated in an interview that "We're broadening ourselves a little bit, taking on some new challenges," but also noted that "I think it's extremely likely that you'll see us return to the 'Sly Cooper' franchise at some point in the future."^[3]

Comics

The cover of the second promotional Sly Cooper comic

Sly Cooper and other characters from the games were also featured in two comic books published in 2004 and 2005 by GamePro Magazine and DC Comics to promote the release of Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves respectively. Both books are used to transition the story from one game to the next.

Issue #1 acted as an in between story between the first and second game, apparently taking place sometime within the 2 year span between them. The plot consists of two flashback stories. One is a flashback to the Cooper gang's first taste of thief work as children at the Happy Camper Orphanage (stealing cookies from a greedy sitter), and the other detailing the first time Carmelita and Sly met, which the two relay to each other with opposing points of view during a rare peaceful conversation with each other.

Issue #2 takes place after the events of Sly 2 and leads up to the events within Sly 3. The story of issue two is broken into four parts. The first part consists of Sly finding a member of his father's gang, McSweeny, in a maximum-security prison due to an invitation. McSweeny tells Sly of a massive vault on a remote island, along with the location of the map to the island, that contains the accumulated treasure of all the Cooper family members stating it as Sly's inheritance. Part two details Sly and Murray breaking into a hospital to rescue the injured Bentley from the authorities, though at the end, Murray demands that Sly flee with Bentley while he stays behind to deal with the officers. Part three consists of Carmelita reviewing footage of Sly and Murray's attempt (with Bentley notably absent) to steal the map to the Cooper Vault's location from a Venetian museum. However, Sly later breaks into her office while she is asleep and steals the vault map from under Carmelita's nose. The final part takes place at the Cooper gang's home in Paris, with Sly reviewing what is needed to get to the vault, while Bentley works on arming his wheelchair with a wide array of gadgets and weaponry to help Sly in the field. Murray returns after his escapades and informs the others that he is leaving the gang and disappears to parts unknown.

Reception

The overall series has earned high praise from reviewers, with aggregate Metacritic ratings of 86%^[4], 88%^[5], and 83%^[6] for the first three games, respectively. Sly Cooper has been considered as one of Sony Computer Entertainment's mascots along with Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank^[7], though some reviewers feel that many gamers have unfairly overlooked the Sly Cooper series in favor of the other two^[1].